Posted
by
samzenpuson Wednesday May 09, 2012 @02:50PM
from the lets-get-small dept.

ananyo writes "Scientists can now add a 'dwarf mammoth' to the list of biological oxymorons that includes the jumbo shrimp and pygmy whale. Studies of fossils discovered last year on the island of Crete in the Mediterranean Sea reveal that an extinct species once thought to be a diminutive elephant was actually the smallest mammoth known to have existed — which, as an adult, stood no taller than a modern newborn elephant (abstract). The species is the most extreme example of insular dwarfism yet found in mammoths."

I thought this has been known for a while, and is the origin of the myth of the cyclops?

The fossil specimens aren't newly discovered; but there was apparently some phylogenetic wrangling about whether they were mammoths or elephants and there weren't enough specimens to get a good size estimate.

The present discovery is that the remains show distinctively mammoth characteristics and that there are enough of them to infer size.

Because they didn't exist in the Jurassic [dinosaur] era? Besides, while there is (and has been for a long time) a great deal of fascination with the dinosaurs, for the megafauna of later eras... not so much.

Exactly, although I'd have to take exception to pygmy whale being described as an oxymoron. Although whales are generally very large the word 'whale' doesn't mean 'large'.

IMO even jumbo shrimp is debatable, shrimp has come to mean small/diminutive but that is derived from the name of the creature and doesn't mean small in and of itself*, where as mammoth actually meant large before it was applied to an animal.

"some pedantic slashdotter is actually going to reply to this after finding some reference to something that could arguably be a "square triangle" just to prove me wrong. "

Well, this is Slashdot, we're here for all your pedantry needs. Unfortunately the best I can do for you is a three-sided figure with internal angles adding up to 360 degrees, just like a square, or an equilateral four-sided figure with internal angles adding up to 180 degrees, just like a triangle. (Spherical and hyperbolic special cases

The word "mammoth" does not come from any word for "large". It comes from the name "earth horn" in Mansi (so says Wikipedia). The fact that we now use the word "mammoth" to mean "large" is by analogy with the animal. As in "that's one elephant-sized headache I've got today".

So, perhaps this is some sort of basis for the minotaur myth? Sure, it's not a bull, but a baby hairy elephant with tusks isn't that far off. Slap on a few thousand years of the game of telephone and you have the minotaur

Many think that it's the origin of the cyclops myth. The skulls of these mammoths (once thought elephants) have very small eye sockets and a giant trunk socket. One could easily imagine that it is the skull of a giant with one big eye.